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Chapter Forty

Madrigal stood behind e and faced thecabinet

Our ies with a halo of aura My eyes in the mirror were not so much blue as transparent The entire surface had a blue cast

Madrigal extended his spread fingers to it They touched the surface, the way kids play at lass

"Do you notice anything?" he asked

"You could play concert piano with that finger spread?"

"Thanks I like steel dru I pridedobservant, but this was like a trick picture puzzle There was theas we usually did I wasn’t about to say we h we did I ay too aware of Sylphia and Phasia hanging in the flies overhead, quite literally Maybe asleep in their spidery, serpentine nests Maybe not

When did arachnid and reptile faal said finally, answering his own question "There’s not that eighth-inch gap, that discrepancy between the real object and the reflected one that gives away that it’s just a reflection It’s useful for kaleidoscopes I’as to use it"

I placedfingerprint to fingerprint, with no break in ie

"Why use it?" I asked "Audiences never see or suspect the mirrors are there if the illusion works, and no one in the audience ever gets close enough to study the reflection"

"Not inside the cabinets, no But I know the difference, as do my assistants I want my illusions to be as perfect as possible"

"Great, but-"

"I’ you that this is a custom-made and rather rare mirror If you do have any ’way’ with mirrors, maybe you can find a neith this mirror"

Oh I put my other hand on the mirror and stepped closer My eyes looked ��ber-blue in the e Evening in Paris perfuhts shiave low of ski at e ofh, not at I pushed lass surface and felt it warm as they sank into it I felt the flesh

I took a deep breath and plungedcharm bracelet of keys and all It disappeared, and ht forearers lifted from my shoulders "You feel as cold as dry ice"

Dry ice A e trick

"I’oing on here What’s on the other side?"

"Maybe freedo off in an acid bath?

I walked into e, into the sheer frigid stream of wintry breath beyond the blue horizon

My blood thickened and pooled into sludge in my veins My heart stopped, like a clock paused between tick and tock I had a split second to regret Quicksilver Ric My lost Lilith That was about it A pathetic litany of a life Maybe Nightwine on a good tick-tock

Me! Alive and ticking

I alking down a long corridor of blue ice, like the inside of a diamond I saw forms entombed there Hunized sohost of Lilith seee ilimpsed

Finally I walked into a dead-end of cold metal reflections, surrounded by htmare, not release!

Then I knew exactly where I was, andrate to high excitement

The stainless steel elevator! I was alone inside it and it was , swift and silent as ah theh the Red Sea, only I was parting liquid walls of frozen water I passed through, into a dark, di to Cicereau’s office

I felt invisible I’d host of my previous reflection in that elevator Was there some simulacrum of myself still in Cicereau’s office? What had been reflective there? No mirror A mob boss doesn’t like to look himself in the eye The walls had been dead black The carpet equally absorbent and dark The desktop had gleamed, but it arm and bloody, not cool and blue

Ah A slab of horizontal e lea the shape of every body in the roo ht

Bless you, booze brother, for the traditional bar decor! But for you I wouldn’t be able to break into this roo on the black marble wet-bar top in front of the ice bucket

The , whole I scra the scene

The office was eht Cicereau was probably rah rollers in forty-thousand-dollar-a-night four-thousand-square-foot suites

The flat computer screen was framed in silver, a wireless ebony keyboard and e canines liked Bluetooth

My face reflected in the sluertips over the mouse ball Hmm Reminded me a little of the head on Ric’s stick shift On the car, my friend Ir and entering with distraction

I’d never broken and entered anything before, and I certainly didn’t feel diserounded

I felt free, in control of the surroundings andI touched I felt here So what had I left behind? An ihost? Lilith?

No ti leather chair and clicked and rocked and rolled through his personal computer files Where to look? The business stuff had to be hidden behind high security passwords But I wasn’t an IRS man or a Fed after his current crimes I wanted to know about his past Where? My Docurandkids They un kits, looking as hu teeth Wonder when the fangs caing tie? Maybe at puberty when all that e Hey, a furry face is a way to escape zits for a while

And Cicereau was bea that barrel-chested suit coat, looking rapacious in a purely corporate way Cicereau in all the pictures, grinning behind the wee ones’ parents Looking not a week older than he had in his office a day ago

And Cicereau finally pictured wearing a fedora in black-and-white iuys in wide-lapelled pin-stripped suits Gangsters Wise guys And then Cicereau wearing a vintage tuxedo, like rin on his pack-Family face No silver hair, no beer belly, a sleek, sliht, sweet Cinderella of a daughter as elfin where he was earthy, shy where he was sly, dehere he was already looking dissolute

Two things were clear: Cicereau had found an immortality potion that didn’t irl in the blue dress buried in Sunset Park’s sand and stone Her The girl with a heart full of first love and a body primed with unleashed feral passion Her Born to be wild

Her Doohtered

Her One of Ric’s Sunset Park dead bodies The long-dead girl I had channeled through therod In a way, she was hter

Chapter Forty-One

While I stared at the happy black-and-white family photo on the computer screen, awash in puzzle sound so syste? No! The private elevator doors opening

I stood, clicking out of Cicereau’s Photo Albu places I doubted I could e any mirror tricks on such notice I was too new at it Besides, Madrigal had probably helped me out on the other end

Here, I was on my own

So, what’s new, Kansas pussycat?

I eyed theCicereau and his staff needed to knoas how I’d rabbed a stapler from the desk and rushed to the door

I couldn’t hear any onco footsteps because of the thick carpets but I sure sensed incoht control to dark and with one whack the heavy metal stapler sla

The roo toward me at a dead run One pair One man I had to knock him unconscious before he sawdoor wouldn’t nail me I still clutched the stapler In a locked-down position it ainsthench his job, but I’d have to steel h to knock him out I put myself back in irl; then, fight like a guy Actually, the first screae, shouting "No!"

Mike Wu had insisted that we all have an inner toddler with a visceral tendency to obey that parental shout, even serial killers

Trouble was, I didn’t want Cicereau and oing to have to shout "no!" forlike a geyser in the silent rooainst the wall and i He knew that one piece of as vacant and took it himself And now he hadit for good measure And then I heard a lock snap Just one of those cheesy set-into-the-doorknob switches, but it’d be hard to find and release quickly in the dark

I had to take hiht side of the closed door, looking for the light control dial

The patting motions found the eh no one could see leareen Funky chartreuse, actually

Shoot! This was sohts of his shine His eyes Wow Maybe six feet off the ground I was five-eight in h to get high enough to hit his head

On the positive side, those reflective irises toldfore or aft

So just howhim move toward the desk

The computer chiht to the room Can’t have that I stood and hurled the stapler at the sound

The display screen slid across the desk and shattered to the floor

There also wentthe crash and turned the knob button sideways That was the "open" position, wasn’t it? I’d seen these locks a thousand times on rest room doors

The chartreuse eyesover the laptop to full height again

They ca toward the door just as I sidled away

He thuainst the wood If I’d still been standing there, I’d have been caught, and seive up nohile I still had an intact skeleton What would Cicereau do to me, really? I was his prize perforing up the dirt on his long-dead daughter Maybe he’d thank me Maybe he didn’t knohat had happened to her Maybe I could hallucinate in the dark There weren’t any photos of her on his trophy wall No, he himself had wanted her dead and buried for soainst all their hopes and plans, proain

While I calculated this and that, the eerie green eyes lunged at exactly where I was standing

I stepped one giant step away, soundlessly, the carpet roord, untranslatable, the olf equivalent of "fuck" probably

I so wished for Quicksilver, but this had been a solo expedition It would have to be a solo escape

I fuarette stands, the metal equivalent of a birdbath pedestal I lifted it in both hands and swung it in a wide, blind swath

It connected with flesh and bone, hard enough that even I winced